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Knowledge entrepreneurship describes the ability to recognize or create an opportunity and take action aimed at realizing the innovative knowledge practice or product. Knowledge entrepreneurship is different from traditional economic entrepreneurship in that it does not aim at the realization of monetary profit, but focuses on opportunities with the goal to improve the production (research) and throughput of knowledge (as in personal transformation (Harvey & Knight, 1996)), rather than to maximize monetary profit. It has been argued that knowledge entrepreneurship is the most suitable form of entrepreneurship for not-for-profit educators, researchers and educational institutions.
This forward looking notion is nicely depicted by Kanter (1983). According to her, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations always operate at the edge of their competence, focusing more of the resources and attention on what they do not yet know (e.g. investment on R&D) than controlling what they already know. They measure themselves not by the standards of the past (how far they have come) but by visions of the future (how far they have yet to go). And they do not allow the past to serve as a restraint on the future; the mere fact that something has not worked in the past does not mean that it cannot be made to work in the future. And the mere fact that something has worked in the past does not mean that it should remain. (Kanter as in (Cornwall & Perlman, 1990, pp. 2728). Using McDonald (2002, pp. 1233), the following specific set of attractors have been proposed by Senges (2007) to directly influence the knowledge entrepreneurship ability (figure 1.6): Environmental awareness describes with what practices and with what intensity the organization gathers information about its external and internal environment. The importance of this practice for the establishment of an entrepreneurial organization was also recognized by Cornwall and Perlman (1990). They write: Scanning should be a fundamental part of every managers job, not something that is done by top management in conjunction with the annual update of the strategic plan(ibid p. 46). As such the concept includes activities like internal needs analysis, benchmarking and inter-organizational networking. The organizations attitude towards the risk inherent in the pursuit of all innovation is captured under the concept of risk tolerance. A factor which has not been part of McDonalds model (and which replaces the variable named analytical diligence ) covers the organizations vision in the sense of entrepreneuring (Kuratko, 2006). This ability is strongly related to strategic thinking and planning, describes its culture of envisioning and scouting new developments. New project support refers to the degree to which new initiatives are institutionalized as a means of institutional development. Thereby the monetary means, as well as managerial attention given to experimental projects is looked at. Communication is the last variable taken into consideration as a major influence for knowledge entrepreneurship. The organizational style of communication and the richness of communication channels are evaluated here. [[ Furthermore the organizational condition, described through its setting and its current leadership and its organizational culture are set to determine the general possibilities for knowledge entrepreneurship to occur. Thereby the organizational setting represents the basic factual being of the organization; its size, type of institution, business model, history and historic approach to innovation. Under leadership the style and values embraced by the current top decision makers, as well as the governance structure itself is evaluated. The concept of organizational culture is central to the understanding of the enabling or discouraging condition of the organization, as it adapts its attitude towards organizational learning and whether values like innovativeness, competitiveness, entrepreneurship etc. are embraced or rejected. On the output side, knowledge entrepreneurship is set to improve innovativeness and thereby indirectly improve performance. But the most important outcome of organisational entrepreneurship is long term: an organisation that is better able to adapt and survive. (Cornwall & Perlman, 1990, p. 29)
personal knowledge capital to be able to create value and/or wealth through the use of that knowledge capital (ibid p. 3). The definition is rather complementary with the Wikipedia conceptualization, only the dependence on existing intellectual capital and the result of wealth creation and/or improved services actually alludes to a different objective than knowledge product or service per se. He continues: The knowledge entrepreneur must know more about the subject at hand than his or her client of boss. It does not always have to be a great deal more, and sometimes the difference is based on the ability to communicate, present, or more importantly, apply the knowledge asset (ibid). Now this argument is not convincing as true knowledge entrepreneurship, as for the knowledge entrepreneur identifying and realizing an opportunity, rather than exploiting existing intellectual capital is the motivating factor. Later, when Skrzeszewski elaborates on how information technology is a key trend to be exploited by knowledge entrepreneurs, his librarian perspective shows through again: There is a growing need and expectation for relevant and usable digital information products and services. At the same time, there is a growing problem of information overload. Therefore, there is an attendant need to organize and package information for users, to put the information in context, to provide information intermediaries and facilitators, and to digitize all forms and formats of information all major entrepreneurial opportunities (ibid 31). Overall Skrzeszewski presents an interesting and valuable book with the aim to foment entrepreneurship among librarians and his general understanding of knowledge entrepreneurship is assessed to be compatible with the Wikipedia definition. The fourth author, McDonald (2002), has conducted his PhD research entitled Knowledge entrepreneurship: Linking organizational learning and innovation about a comparison of the conditions at hospitals regarding their approaches to knowledge sharing and exploration and the entry of innovations. The work is assessed as the first to develop the distinct characteristics of knowledge entrepreneurship. Another Author that has used the theme is Jennifer Rowley. In her paper From learning organization to knowledge entrepreneur (Rowley, 2000) she deals with how organizational learning can be meaningfully conceptualized. Thereby she stresses learning and the usefulness of the knowledge codified. In this context she elaborates on the concept of the knowledge entrepreneur. In her understanding an organization that is a knowledge entrepreneur recognizes the multi-faceted nature of knowledge, and the implication that this has for organization learning. Specifically, a knowledge entrepreneur understands how to interface organizational learning and systems evolution in such a way as to optimize and capitalize on its knowledge resources in pursuit of its vision (ibid p. 14). This understanding expresses the role of knowledge entrepreneurship in a different way but interesting. She writes knowledge entrepreneurship serves to build bridges between people and systems. She then goes on to list what is in her eyes important to achieve the co-evolution of system and organizational learning in tandem. These are: allow for diversity, allow for historicity and a knowledge culture, as well as appropriate systems for storage and dissemination. Lastly a short paper entitled Its difficult to innovate: The death of the tenured professor and the birth of the knowledge entrepreneur (Bouchikhi & Kimberly, 2001) has been published in the Human Relations journal. The paper describes a near future where knowledge entrepreneurs are working under a diversity of employment contracts and attachments (ibid p. 82). Therefore
knowledge entrepreneurs will be hired and compensated based on their ability to imagine, execute, and use of the results of research to develop original educational products. The authors are dealing specifically with business and management education, for which they are painting a profoundly transformed scenario as they are break[in] out of their institutional straight jackets and redefine their roles in the production of knowledge. According to their vision, there will be an almost medieval hierarchy amongst professors, with the super-star academics performing more the role of a CEO of a firm than like the traditional professor, managing their work and their careers with extraordinary autonomy from customary university constraints (ibid p. 82).
Flexible, multi-skilled workforce Financial capital as scarce resource Human capital as scarce resource Corporate HQ as operational controller Corporate HQ as advisor & core competency guardian Hierarchical pyramid structure Employees seen as expense Internally focused top-down governance Both internal and external distributed governance Individualistic functional orientation Team orientation, emphasis on crossfunctional teams Flat or networked structure Employees seen as investment
Information based on "need to know" Open & distributed information system Vertical decision making Emphasis on stability Emphasis on vertical leadership Distributed decision making Emphasis on change Emphasis on empowered self-leadership